^^m^. 


A.J.F,  Behrends 


The  Old  Testament 
Under  Fire 


BSII60 
.B424 


6SMG0 
.B424 


field  Library 


The  .  .  . 

Old  Testament 
Under  Fire. 


BY 

A.  J.  F.  Behrends,  D.D. 


i 


BUTLER   BIBLE-WORK   COMPANY, 
85   BIBLE   HOUSE, 

NEW   YORK. 


i 


.■B4Z4 


WV      •>«r&AASw^%^        Aa^AI 


THE 


Old  Testament  Under  Fire 


NOV  171925 


BY 


A.  J.   F    BEHRENDS    D.D. 


BUTLER    BIBLE-WORK    COMPANY 

85    Bible    House 
New  York 


The  Old  Testament  Under  Fire. 


PRELIMINARY    AND    PERSONAL. 

I  HAVE  been  asked  by  the  Editor  of  The  Christian 
Advocate  to  contribute  three  papers  dealing  with 
the  higher  criticism  of  the  Old  Testament.  In 
acceding  to  that  request,  I  beg  to  say  that  I  do  not 
pose  as  a  specialist.  I  have  only  a  running  acquaintance 
with  the  language  in  which  the  ancient  Scriptures  were 
written,  sufficient  for  the  purpose  of  forming  an  inde- 
pendent judgment,  but  not  warranting  acceptance  on 
my  part  of  the  challenge  of  debate.  I  am  even  less 
concerned  to  appear  as  a  defender  of  the  Bible.  The 
ark  of  God  is  not  in  danger.  Moses  and  the  prophets 
are  too  deeply  imbedded  in  the  life  of  modern  history 
ever  to  be  eliminated  from  it  by  the  analytics  of  criti- 
cism. The  discovery  of  new  truth  can  result  only  in 
good;  and  he  who  deprecates  or  denounces  criticism 
has  already  surrendered  his  faith,  and  has  labeled  him- 
self the  disciple  of  a  blind  traditionalism. 

It  is  not  an  argument,  therefore,  which  I  propose  to 
conduct.  I  am  going  to  rise  in  class-meeting  and  tell 
my  experience,  the  resultant  conviction  to  which  several 
years  of  patient  and  painstaking  study  have  led  me. 
My  readers  must  excuse,  therefore,  the  frequent  use  of 
the  personal  pronoun,  which  in  the  present  case  is  really 


4  THE    OLD    TESTAMENT    UNDER    FIRE. 

an  evidence  of  modesty.  There  came  a  time  when  I 
could  no  longer  take  my  opinions  at  second  hand  from 
the  critical  specialists.  Their  differences  among  them- 
selves were  so  many  and  so  serious  that  the  only  escape 
from  either  agnosticism  or  a  slavish  following  lay  in  inde- 
pendent search.  That  involved,  as  preparatory,  the 
careful  and  repeated  reading  of  the  Old  Testament  in 
Hebrew.  The  price  was  a  heavy  one  for  one  who  had 
become  rusty  in  the  old  Semitic  tongue;  but  it  must  be 
ungrudgingly  paid  by  every  man  who  would  be  sure  of 
his  ground.  The  problems  which  criticism  raises  must 
not  and  can  not  be  left  to  specialists.  They  must  be 
canvassed  by  the  men  who  occupy  the  pulpits,  that  they 
may  speak  with  authority,  though  never  with  ostenta- 
tion. They  will  be  least  obtruded  into  preaching  by 
those  who  are  most  familiar  with  them.  Still,  the  call  of 
the  hour  is  for  preachers  who  can  and  do  read  the 
Hebrew  of  the  Old  Testament  as  readily  and  habitually 
as  they  read  the  Greek  of  the  New.  And  the  men  who 
do  that  should  and  will  preach  the  simplest  Gospel. 

CRITICISM    LARGELY    CONJECTURAL. 

One  thing  which  the  last  five  years  have  taught  me  is 
that  the  questions  which  criticism  raises  cannot  be  settled 
by  mere  argument.  Demonstration  is  out  of  the  ques- 
tion. Probability  is  all  that  can  be  reached,  and  in  the 
logic  of  probability  much  depends  upon  presuppositions 
and  upon  the  personal  peculiarities  of  the  critic.  There 
are  no  perfect  eyes — some  are  even  color-blind.  There 
are  no  perfect  ears — tones  which  to  some  are  distinct 
and  sweet  may  be  faint  and  unmusical  to  others.  There 
are  no  perfect  critics — every  man  brings  his  tempera- 
ment to  the  task.     This  is  true  of  even  textual  criticism. 


THE    OLD    TESTAMENT    UNDER    FIRE.  5 

Tischendorf  and  Tregelles  do  not  agree  in  their  estimate 
of  the  relative  importance  of  the  ancient  manuscripts. 
The  text  of  the  New  Testament  must  remain  uncertain 
so  long  as  the  original  autographs  are  beyond  our  reach, 
and  every  intelligent  Greek  reader  will  exercise  his  lib- 
erty in  the  choice  of  renderings.  The  variations  are 
confessedly  of  no  practical  importance,  but  they  serve 
to  show  that  there  is  considerable  margin  for  the  exer- 
cise of  personal  ingenuity  and  judgment.  What  con- 
vinces one  man  will  not  convince  another,  and  an  author- 
itative dictum  cannot  be  reached.  Much  less  can  such 
a  finality  be  reached  in  the  literary  criticism  of  the  bib- 
lical documents.  The  principles  of  literary  criticism 
have  never  been  formulated.  Where  the  attempt  has 
been  made,  the  results  have  often  been  squarely  set  aside 
by  the  facts.  Genius  has  many  moods,  and  does  not 
work  in  a  mechanical  harness.  Sometimes  it  crawls, 
and  then  suddenly  it  rises  upon  wings  of  power.  Its 
vocabulary  is  not  always  the  same.  Its  style  changes. 
It  shifts  the  point  of  observation.  Its  products  are  not 
of  the  same  grade.  Different  readers  will  be  attracted 
by  different  tones.  Some  will  regard  this,  others  will 
regard  that,  as  distinctive  and  peculiar.  The  critic 
always  carries  his  own  tastes  to  the  task  of  analysis  and 
comparison.  Long  lists  of  words,  peculiarities  of  style, 
philosophical  or  theological  colorings,  are  always  more 
or  less  uncertain  as  data  of  impregnable  conclusions.- 

Hence,  literary  criticism  has  always  revealed  a  wide 
margin  of  conjecture.  Its  theories  have  been  working 
hypotheses,  often  overthrown  when  they  seemed  to  have 
been  firmly  established.  Some  claim  that  the  style  of  the 
Elohist  is  easiest  of  detection  ;  others  think  that  the  style 
of  the  Jahvist  has  been  preserved  in  the  greatest  purity; 


6  THE    OLD    TESTAMENT    UNDER    FIRE. 

Others,  again,  contend  that  the  Redactor  has  tampered 
with  all  styles,  and  made  up  a  literary  mosaic  which 
makes  it  impossible  to  bring  perfect  order  out  of  the  con- 
fusion. Our  work  is  reduced  to  happy  guesses.  And 
when  this  latter  theory  is  maintained,  simple-minded 
I  readers  will  conclude  that  the  mysterious  and  mischiev- 
ous Redactor  may  have  been  the  original  author,  and 
not  a  compiler  of  separate  and  divergent  documents,  so 
that  it  might  have  been  Moses  as  well  as  any  one  else. 
Literary  criticism  is  not  so  simple  a  matter  as  it  seems  to 
be.  It  bristles  with  conjectures.  It  is  far  from  being 
strictly  scientific.  Personality  has  its  hidden  and  un- 
fathomable depths.  The  stronger  the  personality,  the 
more  varied  will  be  its  expression.  It  is  never  safe  to 
predict  what  another  man  may  do,  and  how  he  will  do  it; 
nor  what  he  will  say,  and  how  he  will  say  it.  We  must 
understand  all  his  susceptibilities  and  moods,  and  all 
their  possible  combinations;  and  this  cannot  be  done  a 
priori.  The  man  must  be  judged  by  what  he  has  done 
or  written;  he  cannot  first  be  measured,  and  his  writings 
sifted  and  separated  under  the  assumed  formula.  Time, 
too,  must  be  taken  into  account.  Half  a  century  may 
completely  revolutionize  a  man's  style;  and  a  change  of 
work  may  produce  the  same  result.  Grant  was  a  soldier, 
and  Chief  Magistrate  of  the  nation.  But  his  military  or- 
ders and  reports  are  very  different  from  his  inaugural 
addresses  and  annual  messages.  It  would  not  be  hard 
to  prove  that  General  Grant  and  President  Grant  could 
not  have  been  the  same  person ;  but  the  learned  criticism 
would  be  laughed  out  of  court. 

At  present  the  argument  from  style  is  held  in  abey- 
ance, and  regarded  as  only  supplementary;  the  appeal  is 
to  variety  of  contents  and  to  difference  in  conception. 


THE    OLD    TESTAMENT    UNDER    FIRE.  7 

As  if  a  poet  could  not  write  prose,  and  a  prose  author 
could  not  write  poetry.  Coleridge  did  both  well.  A 
man  may  be  learned  in  the  law,  and  be  able  also  to  make 
a  popular  address.  The  transition  from  one  theme  to 
another,  with  the  inevitable  accompaniment  of  a  change 
in  vocabulary,  does  not  prove  the  agency  of  different 
authors.  The  point  in  all  this  is  simply  that  literary  criti- 
cism is  so  largely  subjective  and  conjectural  that  one  may 
be  excused  for  shrugging  his  shoulders  when  it  becomes 
dogmatic  and  censorious. 

CRITICAL    PROBLEMS    INSOLUBLE. 

A  second  lesson  which  I  have  learned  is  that  while 
the  present  problems  of  the  Old  Testament  are  perfectly 
legitimate,  their  satisfactory  solution  is  something  which 
need  not  be  looked  for.  No  new  Bible  will  be  the  out- 
come. Agreed  as  most  critics  are  as  to  the  quartet  of 
documents  in  the  Hexateuch,  they  are  not  sure  of  their 
original  form  and  contents.  Not  one  of  them,  we  are 
told,  exists  in  its  original  integrity  and  completeness. 
The  Redactor  has  scissored  them  all.  Not  only  are 
there  four  imperfect  documents,  but  each  document  has 
been  compiled  from  many  sources,  which  is  declared  to 
be  pre-eminently  true  of  the  Priest-code.  Nor  are  the 
critics  agreed  as  to  the  date  and  the  relative  antiquity  of 
the  documents.  The  older  scholars  placed  the  Elohist 
first,  but  the  present  school  makes  him  the  last  in  the 
line;  and  the  inversion  compels  the  claim  that  the  poem 
of  creation  is  an  introduction  to  Genesis  added  by  the  la- 
test of  the  great  unknown  four  or  by  their  editor. 

The  second  chapter  of  Genesis  is  supposed  to  con- 
tain a  duplicate  account  of  the  creation,  and  the  history 
of  the  deluge  is  dissected  as  proving  that  two  descrip- 


8  THE   OLD    TESTAMENT    UNDER    FIRE. 

tions  have  been  bunglingly  united.  It  may  provoke  a 
smile  from  some  specialists,  but  honesty  compels  me  to 
say  that,  while  I  have  no  prejudice  against  the  analysis, 
the  aro^uments  advanced  have  not  convinced  me.  The 
first  and  second  chapters  of  Genesis  do  not  seem  to  me 
to  contain  duplicate  accounts  of  the  creation.  The 
second  chapter  is  an  advance  upon  the  first.  Professor 
Green  appears  to  me  to  have  fully  answered  President 
Harper,  And  I  can  discover  no  such  contradictions  or 
variations  in  the  account  of  the  deluge  as  is  assumed  and 
maintained.  This  may  be  because  I  am  not  a  specialist, 
and  am  lacking  in  literary  tact;  but  the  independent  rea- 
der will  have  to  be  taken  into  account  if  the  specialist 
expects  to  give  currency  to  his  analysis.  What  has  been 
said  of  exegesis  is  true  of  criticism,  which  is  only  a  branch 
of  exegesis,  that  its  correctness  must  be  determined  by 
the  intelligent  consensus  of  Christendom. 

More  than  this.  The  literary  criticism  of  the  Old 
Testament  has  ceased  to  trouble  me,  because  I  have 
a  strong  conviction  that  the  problem  upon  which  it  is 
at  work  is  hopelessly  insoluble.  The  history  of  New 
Testament  criticism  affords  an  instructive  example. 
The  synoptic  problem  is  the  most  intricate  and  fascina- 
ting of  all  questions  of  the  later  biblical  literature.  Every 
possible  combination  bas  been  suggested ;  the  most  ex- 
act and  exhaustive  analysis  has  been  made;  and  the  re- 
sult is  failure  along  the  whole  line.  There  is  only  con- 
jecture; and  the  simplest  theory  is  as  good  as  any,  that 
the  gospels  are  independent  of  each  other,  though  rest- 
ing upon  a  common  tradition,  and  that  the  sources  from 
which  they  were  compiled  cannot  now  be  tabulated.  The 
authors  have  not  given  us  their  authorities  and  we  can- 
not make  good  the  literary  omission. 


THE    OLD    TESTAMENT    UNDER    FIRE.  9 

The  composition  of  the  Pentateuch  is  a  problem  of 
tenfold  greater  difficulty.  It  lies  much  farther  away 
from  our  time.  We  have  no  other  writings  of  similar 
traditional  antiquity  with  which  to  compare  it.  Its 
Mosaic  authorship  was  once  denied  on  the  ground  that 
the  age  was  illiterate,  and  that  writing  was  unknown. 
But  recent  discoveries  in  the  valleys  of  the  Nile  and  the." 
Euphrates  have  exploded  that  assumption.  Unless- 
Moses  be  resolved  into  a  purely  mythical  figure,  he 
must  have  known  how  to  write;  and  the  consciousness 
of  his  peculiar  vocation  would  have  impelled  him  to 
write.  How  much  did  he  write  ?  What  documents, 
and  how  many,  did  he  have  in  his  possession  ?  Who  can 
tell  ?  He  has  not  told  us;  and  if  he  did  not  write  aline, 
the  men  who  did  write  the  documents  have  not  affixed 
their  names,  and  they  have  not  told  us  whence  they  de- 
rived their  information.  A  modern  writer  takes  pains 
to  tell  us  what  authorities  he  has  consulted,  and  adds 
numerous  notes  to  the  text.  But  the  Pentateuch  has 
neither  note  nor  appendix.  Nearly  twenty-five  hundred 
years  have  passed  since  the  exile ;  and  if  Ezra  knew  any- 
thing of  these  matters  he  has  given  no  sign.  Take  any 
modern  book,  with  all  contemporary  literature  at  our 
command,  but  with  no  quotation  marks  or  confessions 
of  indebtedness,  would  not  the  literary  analysis  of  its 
sources  be  a  task  of  great  difficulty  ?  But  the  sources- 
of  the  Hexateuch  and  of  the  historical  books  have 
no  independent  existence.  Comparison  cannot  be 
made.  Such  documents  as  existed  have  long  since  per- 
ished. Is  it  not  a  Gordian  knot  over  which  the  critics  are 
breaking  their  finger-nails,  and  who  is  the  Alexander 
that  he  should  cut  the  knot  with  the  sword,  and  then 
claim  that  he  had  untied  it  ?     Apart  from  tradition,  the 


lO  THE   OLD    TESTAMENT    UNDER   FIRE. 

literary  problem  is  insoluble  ;  and  the  only  question  of 
importance  is  whether  the  record  as  it  stands  bears  upon 
it  the  stamp  of  general  truthfulness. 

LITERARY    CRITICISM    SUBORDINATE    TO    HISTORICAL. 

The  third  lesson  which  I  have  learned  is,  that  the 
literary  criticism  of  the  biblical  documents  is,  in  grave 
and  essential  importance,  subordinate  to  the  historical 
criticism  of  their  contents.  In  fact,  literary  criticism 
may  almost  be  said  to  have  become  the  servant  of  his- 
torical criticism.  The  crucial  question  is,  whether  the 
Old  Testament  is  substantially  correct  in  the  account 
which  it  gives  of  the  rise  and  development  of  true 
religion,  and  of  its  culmination  in  the  Messiah  of  law 
and  psalm  and  prophecy.  And  here  there  is  a  subtle 
quality  in  its  literary  substance  and  form  which  wins  my 
confidence  the  more  familiar  I  become  with  it.  It  is 
pervaded  by  a  high  ethical  tone.  It  does  not  picture 
ideal  heroes.  It  sketches  the  shame  as  well  as  the  glory, 
and  both  with  literary  simplicity.  It  exalts  the  veracity 
of  God — His  personal  veracity  as  holiness,  and  His 
veracity  in  dealing  with  men,  as  remembering  and  keep- 
ing His  covenant.  The  prophets  never  flatter.  They 
speak  words  of  truth  and  soberness.  A  lying  history 
I  could  not  have  been  written  by  men  breathing  such  an 
atmosphere.  Be  the  difficulties  of  harmonizing  what 
they  may,  were  they  tenfold  greater  than  they  are,  they 
do  not  and  could  not  compare  with  the  monstrosity  of  a 
forged  and  false  history  issuing  from  men  who  hated 
and  denounced  lying.  But  more.  One  thing  criticism 
has  been  forced  to  grant:  There  was  a  Moses.  His  was 
the  commanding  and  creative  personality.  He  planted 
the  acorn,  if  he  did  not  create  the   wide-branching  tree. 


THE    OLD    TESTAMENT    UNDER    FIRE,  II 

The  theology  and  the  ritual  of  the  Old  Testament  bear 
his  impress.  There  was  an  ark,  and  a  tent,  and  sacri- 
fices, and  a  written  law,  before  there  was  a  temple. 
Monotheism  was  not  a  product  of  the  prophetic  era.  It 
was  present  and  active  from  the  very  first,  though  only 
in  germ,  as  a  religious  force  ratlier  than  a  theological 
dogma,  and  though  it  required  many  centuries  and  many 
a  severe  struggle  to  give  it  exclusive  and  universal 
ascendancy.  So  much  stands,  whatever  reconstruction 
of  the  history  is  ventured  upon.  The  nation  was  right 
when  it  said:  "Abraham  is  our  father,  and  Moses  our 
lawgiver."  And,  with  so  much  granted,  a  good  deal 
more  will  have  to  be  yielded.  The  revolutionary  criticism 
seems  to  have  reached  its  limits,  and  it  is  already  retreat- 
ing to  a  more  moderate  position,  where  the  prophets 
will  not  be  left  without  a  theological  ancestry,  and 
where  the  second  temple  will  not  be  made  the  creation 
of  Ezekiel's  fancy  and  of  Ezra's  manipulation. 

UNWARRANTABLE     ASSUMPTIONS     OF      DESTRUCTIVE 
CRITICISM. 

The  fourth  lesson  which  I  have  learned  is,  that  his- 
torical criticism  of  the  Old  Testament,  so  far  as  its 
results  are  revolutionary  and  destructive,  proceeds  upon 
utterly  unwarrantable  assumptions.  It  denies  the  reality 
of  supernatural  revelation  and  guidance.  It  sneers  at 
miracles,  and  discredits  any  history  which  contains  them. 
It  resolves  predictions  into  happy  guesses,  or  regards 
them  as  MXX^r^di  post  eventujn.  It  claims  that,  where  a  law 
is  generally  disregarded  and  violated,  the  statute  could 
not  have  existed.  It  insists  that  a  steady  upward  evolu- 
tion is  the  universal  law  of  history,  and  that  Israel  there 


12  THE    OLD    TESTAMENT    UNDER    FIRE. 

fore  could  not  have  fallen  from  monotheism  into  idola- 
try, but  must  have  risen  from  fetichism  into  monotheism. 
Taking  so  much  for  granted,  the  attempt  to  prove  the 
recorded  history  misleading  and  incredible  is  a  needless 
task.  But  every  one  of  these  assumptions  is  unscientific, 
and  is  discredited  by  history.  Revelation  is  a  permanent 
feature  of  life,  as  our  ethical  intuitions  and  religious 
aspirations  prove.  Conscience  is  the  mightiest  of  forces, 
supporting  the  authority  of  moral  law  as  uncreated  and 
eternal;  and  conscience  and  moral  law  bring  all  life  into 
living  contact  with  the  supernatural  and  spiritual.  God 
is  immanent  in  the  life  of  the  world.  Theism  granted, 
and  miracles  are  possible,  while  the  resurrection  of  Jesus 
Christ  blocks  the  path  of  every  man  who  ventures  upon 
their  universal  rejection.  All  history  is  luminous  with 
ethical  ideals  which  have  been  widely  disregarded.  The 
golden  rule  is  not  even  now  obeyed;  did  not  Christ  then 
utter  the  words  ?  And  is  it  true  that  an  unbroken  line 
of  upward  development  is  the  story  which  history  tells  ? 
Its  pages  are  full  of  the  record  of  political  and  religious 
apostasies.  The  early  days  of  Greece  were  the  best. 
The  first  centuries  of  Rome  were  the  brightest.  Primi- 
tive Christianity  was  better  than  its  mediaeval  type,  and 
our  theological  reformers  make  the  cry,  *'  Back  to 
Christ,"  their  watchword.  The  record  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment religion  corresponds,  in  its  broad  outlines,  to  the 
general  history  of  the  world,  a  constant  and  fierce  battle, 
a  succession  of  apostasies  and  reformations.  Destruc- 
tive criticism  discredits  its  own  results  by  its  unhistorical 
and  unscientific  assumptions;  and  as  the  foundations 
are  laid  in  the  quicksand,  the  elaborate  superstructure  is 
doomed  to  collapse  v.dthout  the  cost  and  the  fatigue  of 
bombardment.     When  historical  criticism  ceases  to  make 


THE    OLD    TESTAMENT    UNDER    FIRE.  13 

its  conclusions  the  premises  of  its  argument,  it  will  be  / 
time  enough  to  take  it  seriously. 


CHARGES    OF    LITERARY    FORGERY. 

I  pass  to  a  fifth  point.  If  the  philosophical  postu- 
lates of  destructive  criticism  are  unscientific  and  unhis- 
torical,  the  conscious  and  wholesale  literary  immorality 
which  it  charges  upon  the  biblical  writers  provokes  the 
resentment  of  every  fair-minded  student.  It  would  not 
be  so  bad  if  the  literature  were  evaporated  into  romance. 
But  it  is  branded  as  counterfeit  and  as  deliberately  re- 
versing the  order  of  facts,  as  transferring  to  ancient 
times  what  was  an  afterthought  and  a  late  priestly  inven- 
tion. Deuteronom}^  is  declared  not  to  have  been  found 
in  Josiah's  reign  by  Hilkiah,  but  to  have  been  written  by 
him,  and  palmed  oif  upon  the  king  and  the  nation  as  a 
creditable  record  of  what  Moses  said  and  commanded  in 
the  plains  of  Moab.  We  are  told  that  this  pious  act  must 
not  be  condemned  as  forgery,  because  literary  methods 
were  not  as  strict  as  they  now  are,  and  that  wholesale 
plagiarism  was  universally  practiced  ;  that  speeches  were 
credited  to  men  which  they  never  uttered,  and  which 
only  represented  what  the  author  imagined  they  might 
or  must  have  said;  and  that  the  emergency  vv'hich  con- 
fronted Josiali  was  such  that  extraordinary  measures 
were  required  to  meet  it.  But  we  look  in  va-xi,  through 
the  ethics  of  the  prophetical  literature  which  confessedly 
was  in  existence  at  that  time,  for  any  intimation  that  the 
end  justifies  the  means.  Every  prophet  would  have 
denounced  the  maxim ;  and  this  prophetic  environment 
makes  it  incredible  that  so  stupendous  a  literary  inven- 
tion,   upon   which   the    political    fortunes    of    so    many 


14  THE    OLD    TESTAMENT    UNDER    FIRE. 

depended,  could  have  been  undertaken  and  carried 
forward  to  success.  The  audacity  of  the  priest  amazes 
one,  and  the  stupidity  of  the  people  passes  comprehen- 
sion. Was  there  no  way  of  determining  whether  Hil- 
kiah's  roll  was  an  old  or  a  new  one  ?  It  was  not  kept 
under  lock  and  key.  It  was  read  not  only  to  Shaphan, 
the  scribe,  as  a  co-conspirator,  but  also  to  the  king,  who 
was  not  let  into  the  secret,  and  then  to  large  public 
assemblies  which  the  king  summoned.  Friends  and  foes 
of  the  reform  movement  were  present,  saw,  and  heard, 
and  not  a  voice  was  lifted  against  the  solemn  covenant 
which  was  publicly  entered  into  over  this  roll  v/hich 
Hilkiah  had  produced;  and  yet  it  was  all  an  invention! 
Seriously,  what  shall  be  said  of  such  historical  criticism? 
Much  in  the  same  way  the  middle  books  of  the  Pen- 
tateuch are  declared  to  be  a  post-exilian  product,  the 
work  of  an  ambitious  priesthood,  who  dressed  up  their 
ordinances  in  the  literary  garments  of  the  wilderness  life 
to  give  them  easy  currency  among  the  people,  and  then 
invented  the  whole  series  of  patriarchal  stories  as  a  fit- 
ting imaginary  introduction.  Moses  cannot  be  regarded 
as  the  author  even  of  the  Decalogue.  To  admit  that 
would  involve  the  high  antiquity  of  the  first  chapter  of 
Genesis.  The  Psalter  is  brought  down  bodily  to  the 
period  of  the  second  temple,  and  David  vanishes  from 
its  pages  altogether.  Joel  cannot  possibly  be  allowed  a 
place  among  the  older  prophets,  because  his  testimony 
to  the  ancient  ritual  is  too  varied  and  explicit.  Chronicles 
is  a  priestly  fabrication  throughout,  and  wholly  unworthy 
of  credence.  If  similar  passages  are  found  in  Judges  and 
Kings,  subtle,  artless,  and  undesigned  coincidences,  they 
are  quietly  checked  off  as  interrupting  the  narrative,  in- 
troducing   irrelevant    ideas    and    interpolations    by    an 


THE    OLD    TESTAMENT    UNDER    FIRE.  15 

unknown  priestly  redactor.  Such  critical  judgments 
would  be  strange  enough  if  the  books  in  question  were 
only  private  pamphlets,  having  a  narrow  and  official  circu- 
lation. But  the  hypothesis  is  a  most  monstrous  one  when 
it  is  applied  to  documents  which  constituted  a  popular 
literature,  which  passed  into  many  hands  and  were  freely 
circulated,  and  which  were  divided  into  pericopes  and 
regularly  read  in  a  thousand  synagogues.  As  well  sup- 
pose that  Robhison  Crusoe  and  the  Arabian  Nights  will  ever 
be  read  in  our  churches  with  the  gospels  and  the  epistles. 
The  theory  brings  the  indictment  of  forgery  against  the 
entire  nation,  a  supposition  so  violent  that  it  needs  only 
to  be  plainly  stated  to  be  instantly  and  indignantly  re- 
jected. The  nation's  imprimatur  will  count  for  some- 
thing with  every  reader  who  has  no  particular  theory  to 
defend.  He  may  find  difficulties  and  discrepancies,  as 
he  does  in  any  similar  historical  record,  but  he  cannot  re- 
gard the  entire  literature  a  lie. 

The  tortuous  way  in  which  even  moderately  conser- 
vative critics  deal  with  Hilkiah's  discovery  of  Deuteron- 
omy has  a  tendency  to  create  a  profound  distrust  of  the 
literary  ethics  of  the  critical  procedure.  Canon  Driver 
and  Professor  Briggs  shrink  from  the  plain  charges  of 
forgery  preferred  by  Kuenen  and  Wellhausen,  but  they 
save  the  honesty  of  the  main  actors  in  the  scene  only  by 
somewhat  minimizing  their  crime,  and  by  the  use  of 
dexterous  phrases,  which  they  imagine  convert  the  pro- 
cedure into  something  legitimate  and  praiseworthy. 
Canon  Driver  intimates  that  the  kernel  of  Deuteronomy 
is  old  and  of  Mosaic  origin,  but  that  its  "parenetic  set- 
ting" belongs  to  the  age  of  Josiah,  and  that  it  may  be 
described  as  the  "prophetic  reformulation  and  adapta- 
tion to  new  needs  of  an  older  legislation."     Professor 


l6  THE    OLD    TESTAMENT    UNDER    FIRE. 

Briggs  is  somewhat  more  blunt  when  he  says  that  Hil- 
kiah  is  not  the  author  of  the  Deuteronomic  Code,  but  of 
"a  new  codification  of  an  ancient  code,"  of  an  ancient 
code  v/hich  was  found,  and  which  after  its  discovery  was 
cast  into  a  new  historical  form.  His  theory  is  that  ''  an 
ancient  Mosaic  code  was  discovered  in  Josiah's  time,  and 
that  the  code  was  put  into  a  popular  rhetorical  form  as 
a  people's  law  book  for  practical  purposes  under  the  au- 
thority of  king,  prophet,  and  priest."  This,  we  are  told, 
we  are  at  liberty  to  '■'•  suppose.''  Certainly,  and  we  may 
suppose  a  great  many  more  things,  without  a  scintilla  of 
evidence,  and  squarely  in  the  face  of  the  record.  The 
roll,  whatever  it  may  have  contained,  is  said  to  have  been 
found,  and  to  have  been  read,  as  foii7id^  to  Shaphan,  to 
the  king,  and  to  the  people.  There  is  no  intimation  of  a 
recodification,  or  of  the  addition  of  a  new  "  parenetic 
setting."  It  does  not  help  the  matter  to  say  that  the 
literary  forgery  Vvras  only  in  the  dress.  Coin  is  none  the 
less  counterfeit  because  it  contams  a  little  genuine  metal. 
If  we  may  suppose  that  the  parenetic  setting  was  in- 
vented, why  must  we  suppose  the  code  to  have  been  an- 
cient? Whatever  date  may  be  assigned  to  Deuteronomy, 
assuming  Hilkiah's  roll  to  have  been  the  original  Deuter- 
onomy— which  cannot  be  proved — it  would  seem  to  be 
clear  that  there  cannot  be  any  middle  ground  between 
its  being  a  wholesale  literary  fraud  and  its  discovery  in 
its  present  form  in  Josiah's  reign.  Its  present  parenetic 
setting  may  have  been  given  to  it  long  after  Moses, 
but  to  regard  the  parenetic  setting  as  a  later  literary  ar- 
tifice, and  the  attempt  to  associate  that  setting  with  the 
discovery  of  an  ancient  code  by  Hilkiah,  is  substantially 
a  surrender  to  Wellhausen.  It  is  not  so  intended ;  but 
plain  m.en  will  not  be  able  to  make  anything  else  out 


THE    OLD    TESTAMENT    UNDER    FIRE.  1 7 

of  it.  The  critics  mean  well,  but  they  show  a  strange 
ethical  twist  when  they  deceive  themselves  by  phrases 
and  conjectures  whose  emptiness  appears  as  soon  as  they 
are  stripped  of  their  rhetoric. 

RECENT    LEADERS    OF    THE    MEDIATING    SCHOOL. 

The  deserved  prominence  of  Professor  Briggs  as  a 
biblical  critic,  and  the  wide  attention  which  his  utter- 
ances and  trial  have  commanded,  justify  a  brief  reference 
to  his  last  book  as  outlining  his  present  position.  In  it 
he  professes  to  have  given  the  results  of  twenty-seven 
years  of  critical  study,  and  Christian  scholarship  had  a 
right  to  expect  as  strong  and  conclusive  an  argument  as 
it  was  possible  for  him  to  give.  Candor  compels  me  to 
say  that  the  reader  is  doomed  to  bitter  disappointment, 
and  can  only  close  the  volume  with  the  certain  convic- 
tion that  the  author  has  not  solved  the  problems  of  Old 
Testament  criticism..  The  book  is  a  strange  medley, 
consisting  of  several  documents  of  earlier  publication, 
which  have  been  amended,  expanded,  or  contracted, 
with  numerous  interpolations  of  sentences  and  para- 
graphs, and  v/ith  equally  num.erous  reversals  of  previous 
judgments.  It  is  practically  an  abandonment  of  the 
conservative  ground  which  the  author  held  ten  years 
ago,  a  conservatism  which  at  that  time  was  regarded  as 
dangerous  liberalism.  At  that  earlier  period  he  had 
already  occupied  a  professor's  chair  for  fourteen  years, 
and  had  been  a  specialist  in  Old  Testament  studies  for 
seventeen  years.  Ke  had  mastered  the  literature  of  the 
whole  subject,  and  the  theories  of  Graf,  Kuenen,  and 
Wellhausen  had  long  been  familiar  to  scholars.  Ten 
years  ago  his  judgment  of  the  composition  and  author- 
ship  of    the    Pentateuch   was    stated    in    these    words: 


l8  THE    OLD    TESTAMENT    UNDER    FIRE. 

"There  is  nothing  in  the  variation  of  the  documents,  as 
such,  to  require  that  they  should  be  successive  and  sepa- 
rated by  wide  intervals,  or  that  would  prevent  their 
being  very  nearly  contemporaneous.  There  is  nothing 
in  the  distinction  of  the  documents,  as  such,  that  forbids 
the  Mosaic  age  as  the  time  of  their  origin." 

On  the  date  of  Deuteronomy  Professor  Briggs  de- 
clared in  1883,  that  De  Wette's  theory  was  "exceedingly 
precarious."  He  claimed  to  have  disproved,  against 
De  Wette,  the  location  of  Deuteronomy  in  the  age  of 
Josiah,  and  to  have  shown  that  itsorigin  must  be  thrown 
back  into  the  Mosaic  age.  As  to  the  post-exilian  origin 
of  the  Priest  Code  he  miaintained  that  there  "were  insu- 
perable objections  "  to  such  a  theory,  and  he  presented 
his  reasons  in  detail.  He  admitted  the  order  of  devel- 
opment, for  which  Kuenen  and  Wellhausen  contended, 
but  he  denied  "that  it  was  necessary  to  postulate  a 
thousand  years  for  this  development,"  and  he  suggested 
that  "if  we  should  suppose  that  Eleazar  or  some  other 
priest  gathered  these  detailed  laws  and  groups  of  laws 
into  a  code  at  the  time  subsequent  to  the  conquest,  all 
the  conditions  of  variation  and  development  might  be 
explained." 

Between  this  and  the  contention  of  1893  the  gulf  is 
deep  and  wide.  The  last  book  displays  no  greater 
learning  than  the  earlier  essay,  and  in  logical  vigor  it  is 
decidedly  inferior.  His  last  volume  has  certainly  not 
added  to  his  reputation.  Its  learning  is  undigested. 
The  material  is  chaotic.  The  tone  of  argument  is  not 
judicial.  There  is  a  painful  want  of  logical  clearness 
and  consistency.  Ingenious  suggestions  take  the  place 
of  proof.  Dangerous  and  revolutionary  theories  are 
modified  by   a  personal  caveat.     Their  logical  issue  is 


THE    OLD    TESTAMENT    UNDER    FIRE.  19 

simply  evaded.  Names  are  made  to  take  the  place  of 
evidence.  The  reader  is  overawed  by  a  list  of  author- 
ities, in  which  all  schools  are  indiscriminately  jumbled 
together.  The  counter  arguments  are  in  the  main 
ignored,  and  conservative  critics  are  labeled  in  school- 
boy fashion.  The  reader  who  can  divest  himself  of 
prejudice  lays  down  the  book  with  the  feeling  that,  if 
this  is  the  best  that  can  be  said,  the  problem  has  not 
even  been  clearly  stated,  and  that  its  solution  is  a  long 
way  oft.  And  the  same  judgment  must  be  passed  upon 
Canon  Driver's  book,  which  Professor  Briggs  speaks  of 
as  * 'invaluable,"  many  a  page  of  which  bristles  with 
assumptions  for  which  not  the  slightest  evidence  is 
given.  The  critical  processes  are  reverential  in  spirit, 
but  they  are  very  far  from  being  severely  scientific ;  and 
the  historical  criticism  is  thoroughly  loose  and  arbitrary. 
The  traditional  view  of  the  origin  of  the  present  Penta- 
teuch may  require  modification,  but  the  present  medi- 
ating school  cannot  be  said  to  have  defended  the  credi- 
bility of  the  Old  Testament,  and  its  claim  to  being  the 
record  of  a  divine  revelation,  against  the  assaults  of  the 
destructive  critics. 

Perhaps  one  of  the  fairest  specimens  of  the  present 
mediating  school  which  seeks  to  retain  the  divine 
authority  of  the  Old  Testament  as  a  gradually  unfolding 
religious  revelation,  while  regarding  the  literature  as  a 
late  production,  largely  composed  of  mythical  and 
legendary  elements,  and  worthless  in  many  parts  as  his- 
torical material,  is  the  treatise  on  Old  Testament  Theology^ 
by  Dr.  Hermann  Schultz,  of  Gottingen,  a  work  now 
accessible  to  English  readers.  The  tone  is  calm  and  the 
spirit  is  reverent.  The  reality  of  a  divine  revelation  in 
the   production    of   the   ancient   faith  is   conceded  and 


20  THE    OLD    TESTAMENT    UNDER    FIRE. 

maintained,  as  demanded  by  the  conditions  of  the  prob- 
lem to  be  solved.  Monotheism  in  a  religious  form  is 
affirmed  to  have  been  the  pre-Mosaic  faith  in  Israel, 
though  Moses  did  much  to  give  it  prominence,  while  the 
prophets  are  credited  with  giving  it  theological  form. 
The  deliverance  from  the  bondage  of  Egypt  is  regarded 
as  an  historical  fact,  as  everywhere  assumed,  inextri- 
cably interwoven  with  all  the  subsequent  history,  though 
the  miracles  are  passed  over  in  silence.  Moses  cannot 
be  a  myth.  He  is  not  the  author  of  the  Decalogue  in  its 
present  form,  because  the  stern  prohibition  against  the 
use  of  images  in  divine  worship  points  unmistakably  to  a 
later  period,  though  in  some  form  the  Ten  Command- 
ments must  be  acknowledged  as  the  basis  of  his  legisla- 
tion. There  was  an  ark  which  was  sheltered  by  a  tent, 
though  the  tabernacle  is  the  creation  of  later  poetic 
fancy;  its  description  being  *'not  a  delineation  of  an 
actual  thing,  but  a  depicting  of  religious  thoughts  bor- 
rowed from  Solomon's  temple."  The  presence  of  the 
ark  gave  to  Israel  from  the  first  a  national  sanctuary, 
outranking  in  dignity  all  local  altars,  and  in  that  sanctu- 
ary no  image  ever  found  a  place,  though  the  exclusive 
dignity  of  the  sacred  shrine  which  contained  the  ark 
dates  from  a  much  later  period,  to  which  David,  Solo- 
mon, and  other  kings,  contributed.  The  tribe  of  Levi  is 
conceded  to  have  been  a  priestly  class  from  the  begin- 
ning, though  not  to  the  exclusion  of  other  individuals, 
and  without  such  an  organization  as  appears  in  the  mid- 
dle books  of  the  Pentateuch.  Sacrifice  is  an  early 
institution.  The  feasts  of  tabernacles  and  of  the  pass- 
over  are  of  Mosaic  origin.  Circumcision  is  a  pre-Mosaic 
custom  and  religious  in  its  meaning,  as  a  consecration  of 
life  to  God. 


THE    OLD    TESTAMENT    UNDER    FIRE.  21 

This  hasty  review  shows  how  much  the  historical 
analysis  feels  constrained  to  grant  as  a  basis  upon  which 
the  great  prophetic  era  must  rest.  The  edifice  of  the 
ninth  century  before  Christ,  as  represented  by  the  older 
prophets  and  by  Isaiah,  and  by  the  cultus  of  the  exile, 
must  have  some  solid  foundation  in  the  ancient  era. 
The  argument  is  unanswerable,  and  its  lines  have  been 
skillfully  followed  by  Professor  Robertson,  of  Glasgow. 
But  it  is  hard  to  see  how  Schultz  can  concede  so  much, 
while  contending  that  the  literature  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment is  trustworthy  only  as  showing  what  was  believed 
when  that  literature  was  produced,  and  that  it  cannot  be 
relied  upon  as  an  historical  record.  The  concessions 
are  at  war  with  the  criticism.  It  is  only  an  individual 
opinion  which  remains,  unsupported  by  documentaiy 
evidence,  and  such  an  opinion  can  have  no  authority. 
Every  man  is  at  liberty  to  apply  the  brakes  anywhere,  or 
to  refuse  applying  them  anywhere.  Whatever  the  pic- 
ture of  the  Mosaic  age,  it  must  be  drawn  from  the  liter- 
ature as  it  now  exists,  a  literature  which,  as  a  whole,  is 
discredited  by  Schultz  as  much  as  it  is  by  Wellhausen. 
That  literature  is  confessedly  homogeneous,  as  even 
Ev/ald  insisted ;  and  it  would  seem  that  if  the  literature 
is  false  in  toHs,  it  cannot  be  reliable  in  singulis.  Some, 
with  Vernes,  have  taken  that  step,  and  declare  that  the 
entire  history  is  legendary,  and  that  the  Mosaic  era  must 
,  remain  for  us  a  splendid  national  myth.  And,  to  me  at 
least,  the  herculean  labors  of  the  mediating  school  seem 
to  be  an  attempt  to  arrest  Niagara  by  a  dam  of  straw. 

REAL    DIFFICULTIES    OF    BIBLICAL    CRITICISM. 

The  difficulties  and  the  discrepancies  which  emerge  in 
a  critical  examination   of  the  Scripture  records  are  con- 


22  THE    OLD    TESTAMENT    UNDER    FIRE. 

nected  with  the  minor  details  of  the  narrative,  and  with 
the  fragmentary  nature  of  the  literature  in  which  the 
history  has  been  preserved.  One  peculiarity  of  that 
literature  is  that  it  is  prophetic,  not  photographic.  It 
seizes  upon  the  great  outstanding  facts  in  which  the 
divine  discipline  of  the  race,  and  especially  of  the  chosen 
people,  is  most  clearly  manifest,  and  by  which  the  prepa- 
ration for  the  advent  of  Jesus  Christ  is  most  signally 
illustrated.  The  Bible  is  written  in  a  large  way,  not  in 
the  method  of  minute  descriptive  and  chronological 
completeness.  We  are  conducted  over  a  series  of  moun- 
tain peaks,  while  the  broad  intervening  valleys  are 
left  shrouded  in  mist  and  gloom.  The  lives  of  the 
patriarchs  are  fragmentary  sketches.  The  bondage  in 
Egypt  occupies  only  a  paragraph.  We  look  in  vain  for  a 
biography  of  Moses,  whose  personal  discipline  of  eighty 
years  must  have  had  an  important  bearing  upon  his  sub- 
sequent public  career.  The  story  reads  abruptly,  but 
the  abruptness  is  due  to  the  silence  which  covers  the 
formative  years.  Thirty-eight  years  of  the  wilderness 
life  are  passed  over  in  silence,  and  we  might  argue  from 
the  silence  that  they  are  a  legendary  addition,  while,  if 
the  silence  were  removed,  the  lost  background  of  the 
priestly  legislation  might  be  recovered.  Judges,  Samuel 
and  Kings  do  not  furnish  complete  histories.  Here  and 
there  we  come  upon  sharp  and  severe  conflicts  between 
monotheism  and  idolatry,  without  any  intimation  as  to 
the  relative  strength  of  the  opposing  parties,  and  with- 
out any  sketch  of  the  intervening  periods.  Even  when 
altars  multiplied,  and  sacrifices  were  offered  on  a  hun- 
dred heights,  a  central  sanctuary  remained,  with  its 
tabernacle  and  ark  and  altar,  as  in  Samuel's  time,  and  in 
the   period    of    the    kings.       The   ritual    in    use  is   not 


THE    OLD    TESTAMENT    UNDER    FIRE.  23 

described  ;  but  the  same  silence  characterizes  the  mention 
of  idolatrous  forms  of  worship,  though  we  know  that 
these  were  in  charge  of  a  priesthood,  and  must  have 
been  associated  with  a  regular  and  imposing  ceremonial. 
There  was  always  a  remnant  which  resisted  the  popular 
current,  and  that  remnant  always  appealed  to  ancient 
usage.  Royal  authority  might  seize  the  temple  and 
corrupt  the  priesthood  and  ignore  the  ancient  feasts; 
but  the  fact  that  repeated  attempts  were  made  to  correct 
these  abuses  proves  that  the  remembrance  of  the  older 
order  never  wholly  perished. 

If  in  Elijah's  time,  when  Ahab  and  Jezebel  ruled  in 
Samaria,  seven  thousand  had  not  bowed  the  knee  to 
Baal,  we  may  confidently  presume  that  much  larger 
numbers  retained  the  primitive  faith  under  better  kings. 
The  fact  that  royal  authority  so  often,  and  for  such  long 
periods,  stood  in  the  way  of  a  general  and  orderly  obser- 
vance of  the  appointed  feasts  and  sacrifices,  does  not 
prove  that  there  existed  universal  ignorance  of  an  an- 
cient and  Mosaic  ritual,  much  less  that  such  a  ritual  had 
never  been  instituted.  The  fragmentariness  of  the  rec- 
ord deprives  the  argument  from  silence  of  its  adverse 
w^eight,  and  the  final  triumph  of  the  monotheistic  doc- 
trine and  of  the  centralized  ritual  implies  their  presence 
from  the  earliest  stages  of  the  religious  conflict.  That 
there  should  be  variant  accounts  of  the  long  periods,  as 
when  Chronicles  and  Kings  are  compared,  is  not  surpris- 
ing, when  we  bear  in  mind  that  no  writer  has  given  a 
complete  account  of  any  single  event  or  reign;  and 
hence,  to  pit  Judges  and  Samuel  against  the  Pentateuch, 
and  Kings  against  Chronicles,  and  the  prophets  against 
the  Priest  Code,  is  a  thoroughly  unscientific  procedure. 
That  there  are  difficulties  in  harmonizing  the  accounts  is 


24  THE    OLD    TESTAMENT    UNDER    FIRE. 

freely  granted,  and  the  task  of  historical  reconstruction 
is  not  an  easy  one;  but  the  problem  is  certainly  not 
solved  by  arraying  the  records  against  each  other,  by 
throwing  the  accessible  materials  into  inextricable  confu- 
sion, and  by  charging  the  writers  with  manipulating  and 
even  inventing  the  facts  in  support  of  their  theories. 

Similar  difficulties  confront  us  in  harmonizing  the 
evangelistic  narratives  and  in  reproducing  the  exact  his- 
tory of  the  early  Church.  The  gospels  and  the  Acts  are 
fragmentary  records,  and  leave  many  questions  unan- 
swered. If  we  had  only  the  Synoptists,  we  might  con- 
clude that  our  Lord's  public  ministry  lasted  only  a  single 
year.  The  fourth  gospel  compels  us  to  adopt  a  different 
chronology.  There  are  varying  reports  of  the  same 
miracles,  of  the  Lord's  Prayer,  of  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,  and  of  Christ's  dying  utterances.  The  different 
accounts  of  the  resurrection  of  our  Lord  cannot  be  har- 
monized. It  was  not  within  the  range  of  human  possi- 
bility to  give  a  perfectly  accurate  or  photographic 
description  of  so  momentous  an  event.  The  resurrec- 
tion itself,  like  the  creation  or  incarnation,  was  an  invis- 
ible and  inscrutable  miracle.  No  one  saw  the  Crucified 
rising  from  the  sepulcher.  The  agreement  is  perfect 
that  Christ  was  seen  after  He  had  risen  from  the  dead, 
and  that  is  the  only  thing  of  importance.  Who  was  first 
at  the  grave,  and  whether  there  were  two  angels  or  only 
one,  are  matters  of  insignificance.  So,  while  there  is 
general  agreement  between  the  narrative  in  Acts  and  the 
Pauline  epistles,  there  are  minor  details  which  present 
difficulties  in  completely  harmonizing  the  different 
accounts.  Such  imperfections  belong  to  all  historical 
literature.  Its  credibility  is  limited  to  the  general  lines 
of  movement;  variant  and  even  contradictory  accounts 


THE    OLD    TESTAMENT    UNDER    FIRE.  25 

appear  as  soon  as  unimportant  details  are  brought  into 
the  story.  There  is  no  agreement  as  to  the  hour  of  day 
on  which  the  battle  of  Waterloo  was  fought;  but  Water- 
loo was  fought.  There  are  square  contradictions  as  to  the 
place  where  Bismarck  and  Napoleon  met  at  Sedan ;  but 
Napoleon  surrendered  at  Sedan.  The  main  fact  is  not  dis-  f 
credited  by  the  variant  and  even  contradictory  testimony 
concerning  minor  details.  It  would  be  easy,  adopting 
the  methods  of  the  current  Old  Testament  criticism,  to 
discredit  the  entire  traditional  history  of  the  Plymouth 
Colony,  and  to  resolve  it  into  an  admixture  of  fact  and 
fiction  by  pitting  the  writings  of  Bradford  against  those 
of  Winslow,  and  by  showing  that  in  some  particulars 
Bradford's  history  is  contradicted  by  his  Letter  Book. 

GENERAL    CREDIBILITY    THE    ONLY    RESULT    OF    HISTORICAL 
CRITICISM. 

General  credibility — credibility  in  the  main  outlines — 
is  all  that  can  be  demanded  of  historical  and  biographical 
literature.  He  who  exacts  more  may  as  well  turn  his 
back  upon  all  the  historians,  even  the  most  painstaking 
and  conscientious  of  them.  Are  we  to  look  for  anything 
more  in  an  inspired  writer?  That  question  may  be 
answered  dogmatically  in  the  affirmative.  It  may  be 
assumed  that  the  biblical  history  must  be  complete  and 
absolutely  inerrant  in  every  slightest  detail.  But  the 
assumption  is  contradicted  by  the  facts.  There  are 
incomplete  and  variant  accounts,  and  thus  far  the  differ- 
ences have  refused  to  melt  together  in  the  critical 
crucible.  General  credibility  is  all  that  we  can  claim, 
and,  whether  it  suits  our  dogmatic  position  or  not,  we 
must  be  content  with  it.     It  certainly  is  a  reversal  of  all 


26  THE    OLD    TESTAMENT    UNDER    FIRE. 

scientific  and  sensible  criticism  to  seize  upon  the  vari- 
ations in  the  historical  narrative,  and  by  their  use  to  dis- 
credit the  entire  record  and  to  reverse  its  general  move- 
ment; as  unreasonable  and  absurd  as  it  would  be  to 
make  the  battle  of  Waterloo  a  fiction,  or  to  convert  Bis- 
marck and  Napoleon  into  legendary  persons,  because 
the  accounts  of  different  eye-witnesses  do  not  agree. 
Few  things  are  more  important  for  the  critical  study  of 
the  Bible  than  a  liberal  supply  of  downright  common 
sense;  and  when  historical  criticism  parts  with  common 
sense,  applying  tests  to  Scripture  which  would  not  be 
applied  to  any  other  historical  literature,  the  critical 
results  are  discredited  in  advance.  Variations  in  his- 
torical details  ought  not  to  be  an  obstacle  to  faith. 
They  are  watermarks  of  general  veracity  and  evidence 
of  independent  testimony;  they  prove  that  there  was  no 
collusion.  It  may  be  that  other  and  graver  difficulties 
face  us  in  Holy  Scripture  as  a  trial  to  our  faith,  to  purge 
it,  to  teach  us  the  important  lesson  that  the  letter  killeth, 
while  only  the  spirit  maketh  alive.  The  Bible,  after  all, 
is  the  handbook  of  redemption.  It  tells  us  "  how  to  go 
to  heaven,  not  how  the  heavens  go."  It  has  been  given 
us  to  make  us  wise  unto  salvation,  and  to  perfectly 
equip  us  for  every  service  in  righteousness.  This  has 
been  its  great  and  mighty  mission  in  the  past,  and  the 
past  is  sufficient  to  vindicate  its  unique  dignity  and 
authority.  That  mission  let  us  push  with  an  undying 
ardor,  until  its  message  of  hope  has  won  all  hearts,  and 
made  the  face  of  the  round  earth  radiant  with  its  eternal 
joy. 


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The  Old  Testament  under  fire  ... 

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